Using RCS version control to manage simple scripts

IN AND OUT

The Revision Control System (RCS) provides simple, reliable version control without the complexity of bigger systems like Subversion or CVS.

If you are the kind of Linux user with a collection of homegrown scripts, such as Perl snippets for downloading web comics or Shell scripts for backing up files, you may have considered adopting some form of version management tracking. For a single user, it doesn’t always make sense to use one of the popular, but complex, tools, such as CVS [2] or Subversion [3]. If you’re looking for a simpler level of version control, you may want to try the Revision Control System (RCS). RCS is a well tested and stable tool with excellent support. If your distribution does not come with RCS, you can either download it from the GNU project homepage [1], or get it direct from the official RCS homepage [4]. The INSTALL and INSTALL.RCS files from the unpacked tarball, rcs-5.7.tar.Z, provide notes for installing from the source files.